Broadly, a dental plate (denture) is a prosthetic device that provides a user with artifical teeth to replace missing ones. A full dental plate is required when the wearer has lost all of his upper or lower teeth, and comprises a relatively hard plastic or rubber body that conforms to the contours of the wearer's upper of lower gums, and a plurality of artificial teeth mounted thereto. Typically, the denture is cast from a mold that is taken from the wearer's mouth in order that it conforms as closely as possible to the actual contours of the wearer's mouth. Despite advances in techniques and materials for making the molds and the dental plate itself, variations inevitably occur, in part due to normal changes in the wearer's mouth. Thus after time the denture typically bears on localized portions of the gum and palate tissues, thereby causing discomfort to the wearer. In the extreme, ill-fitting dentures may cause permanent damage to the bone structure of the mouth.
A further problem with ill-fitting dentures is that when the wearer attempts to chew or bite various kinds of foods, the denture comes loose to the embarrassment of the wearer. This problem is most severe with the upper dental plate due to gravity. Often, in an effort to minimize discomfort and/or embarrassment, the wearer avoids thoroughly chewing his food, thereby increasing the risk of digestive problems and the like.
In recognition of these problems, many devices and preparations have been developed to provide an adhesive cushion between the hard denture material and the relatively soft mouth tissue to maintain the denture in position despite the forces that arise when the wearer chews anything but the softest food. One preferred solution to the problem is to lay a bead of water insoluble, viscous adhesive compound along the gum confronting portion of the denture so that when the denture is pressed into place, the bead of material flows outwardly over the gum tissue to provide a suction seal and cushioning effect. Since such material is relatively insoluble in water, it presents cleanup problems that tend to render its use undesirable. For example, in addition to having to remove the material that adheres to the dental plate when it is removed from the mouth, the user must also scrape away a portion of the adhesive material that remains on his gums. Depending on the amount of material to be removed and any possible soreness of the gums, this can be a most unpleasant and/or embarrassing task. Granular adhesives adapted to be sprinkled on a wetted denture are less messy to clean up, but have the disadvantage that the material sloughs off and is swallowed within a few hours, thereby making it necessary for the wearer to move his dentures and reapply the material. Given the wide variety of situations in which denture wearers find themselves, it is clear that under certain circumstances this is impossible, so that the user then finds himself without either the cushioning or adhesive benefits of the preparation. Both the viscous and granular adhesive materials may also affect the taste of food.
A different approach to the problem employs an impregnated fabric pad. Such a pad may be impregnated with an adhesive material while still largely avoiding the problem of adhesive residue since the bulk of the adhesive comes off within the fabric matrix. Alternately, the pad may be impregnated with a water insoluble wax-like material which does not become adhesive in use, but which softens to make the pad conform to the desired configuration and retain such a configuration. Along this line, a preformed cotton fiber pad may be used.
One feature that the above described denture pads have in common is that they are relatively costly, such cost being in part necessitated by the various processing steps in their fabrication. Thus financially poor users are sometimes tempted to wash and reuse the pads, even where the manufacture has specified that a fresh pad is to be used each day. Such reuse is unsound from a hygienic point of view, and further reduces the efficacy of the product. The seriousness of this problem is compounded since the poorer denture wearers are the ones who are most likely to be troubled by ill-fitting dentures. Moreover, hygiene facilities may be poorer for those very wearers who are most tempted to reuse the pads. A further difficulty with the various pad materials is that they are generally available in a small number of thicknesses. This may present a problem to a denture wearer who requires a pad having a thickness that is between two available thicknesses. Moreover, in the event that a user is experiencing a certain amount of swelling, different thicknesses may be needed from one day to the next.